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RickB- Human, Artist, Fool.

Ynys Mon, UK.

The blog is called ten percent because of what Kurt Vonnegut wrote when remembering Susan Sontag - She was asked what she had learned from the Holocaust, and she said that 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction.-

And I'm writing it because I need the therapy and I lust for world domination.

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Candle In The Wind

5 November, 2009 — RickB

It is very apparent there is an underlying intermittent fault on my phone line that after years has never been repaired, so in times of high wind (like now) my connection is tenuous, flickering on and off. Intermittent faults are the most tedious to diagnose and solve thus BT Open Reach are in no rush to even acknowledge it. Anyway that’s why I have no idea if this will even publish or when I can read and blog. That and now reports of inlaws electricity down the road going as this wind keeps up, so, sorry but a privatised telecoms infrastructure means this wee corner of the web is a bit wobbly right now. However in short order-

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12 Responses to “Candle In The Wind”

I’ve had encounters with bt engineers and i’ve learnt this. Any problem with your phone is nearly always a problem with extensions. On the new sockets you if you take the top half of the front plate off it reveals a phone socket which you can plug a phone into which gives you a direct line outside the house isolating all extensions. You can then tell whether the fault is inside or outside the house. Inside, you pay if you call out an engineer. Outside, it should be their problem to fix. A bt engineer told me that just to turn up at your door is £100. I’ve refused to pay twice and I’ve heard of countless other tales of corporate, monopolistic greed. And the work they do, which an electrician friend viewed was shoddy, to say the least. Don’t be afraid to do this kind of work yourself. The main line coming into your house on a standard phone line has many coloured cores but only two actually do anything. Trial and error to connect up and your away. Common fault which causes line crackle is a bit of moisture inside the box. Use a hairdryer. bT WILL CHARGE £200 TO WIPE WITH A BIT OF TISSUE. uNBELIEVABLE, BUT A TRUE EXAMPLE.

“…A bt engineer told me that just to turn up at your door is £100. ” I agree, that sucks.

Be glad you aren’t living in a major city in the USA. A friend’s eyes began hurting her, so we took her to the hospital emergency room. At the Emergency room we she was told the visit would cost $370.00. And, yes, they take Visa.

Six hours of waiting. Finally a doctor putting some drops in her eyes and doing a pressure test (used traditional instruments, nothing high-tech). After waiting another hour to get her paperwork filled out (I had to hunt down a nurse for that!), we left.

Two weeks later she’s confused by the two bills. One is from the doctor, saying she owes $160. Another bill is from the hospital. Good news! She qualified for the “Uninsured discount” ($120). Bad news: she owes an addition $180. Because doctor and hospital bill separately, she owes another $340 on top of the $370 she had paid already.

Total cost: $830.
Cost to uninsured patient: $710.

No fancy technology. Just 30 minutes of the doctor’s time… And a $50 bottle of eye drops.

Well said, and sheer greed , but let’s have a look at British Gp’s. Free at the point of delivery yes, but these days you have to be very persistent to get service. To get an appointment can take days, after hours service is virtually non-existent and quite frankly, on times, we could diagnose ourselves better. Some of them are on £2000 per week and work a very limited one. Differential is one thing but their wages are obscene.

To some extent NL paid them so much more to get them onside with their privatisation reforms, they wanted GP’s to see themselves as corporate management to distance them from their patients which judging from the swank cars you see outside practices is working for some. However as Jotman shows we our a million times better off than the US despite the pressure from capital to retake health as a profit centre.

Well, it looks as if $700 Emergency room visit might soon be a relic of “the good old days.” Under the health reform bill that the Democrats passed last night (the one making it illegal even for a woman’s private insurance policy to pay for an abortion) it could cost a lot more than $700 for an uninsured American to visit the hospital Emergency Room:

“H.R. 3962 provides that an individual (or a husband and wife in the case of a joint return) who does not, at any time during the taxable year, maintain acceptable health insurance coverage for himself or herself and each of his or her qualifying children is subject to an additional tax.” [page 1]

“If the government determines that the taxpayer’s unpaid tax liability results from willful behavior, the following penalties could apply…” [page 2]

“Criminal penalties
Prosecution is authorized under the Code for a variety of offenses. Depending on the level of the noncompliance, the following penalties could apply to an individual:
• Section 7203 – misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.
• Section 7201 – felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]

So we know who makes law- politicians on behalf of the corporations who own them even when that means people will die, people the politicians are meant to represent, two thirds of US citizens wanted single payer that cut out the for profit insurance and health industry, they did not get it. Bottom line – Their own govt will kill them for money. You don’t need arcane 911 conspiracy theory to see an elite conspiracy that results in thousands upon thousands of dead citizens, but because of the success of the red scare years, actual awareness of capitalism, corporatism and the alternatives are a forbidden subject. It’s no mistake the most popular alternative ideology is right wing libertarianism, it helps capital and gives ill informed yet frustrated citizens an outlet for their despair (not to mention Randroids). The people are being asset stripped and reduced to indentured servitude.

Throw on 34,000 troops for AFPAK and I expect a lot of Obama voters are feeling like New Labour voters did a few years ago, betrayed and trapped (with no party with a chance of power around to support).

If the Democrats produce a health bill that’s worse than no bill at all, looking to the future, it would seem to risk putting many progressives in the position of those misinformed right-of-center voters who exhibit paranoid fear of government.

In other words, a really bad bill sort of proves the loony right wing people were not altogether wrong to have feared Obama: Except that it wasn’t Obama’s “socialism” that they needed to fear, but his “corporate socialism” or corporatism. This distinction, while crucial, seems to be lost on the population at large.

Should this scenario unfold, at the end of the day, the misinformed rightists are likely to feel vindicated. They will call the Obamatons fools, and they will have a point.

They will although from a flawed perspective ie they want doctors and hospitals for profit but that does not qualify as healthcare. There is no criticism that has moral value from the right, they are blinded by their prejudice, actually what Obama is doing is a conservative reform, single payer was frozen out at the debate stage/townhall by dems and the right happily volunteered themselves to take all the attention with their mob behaviour. End result partisans fight and corporations laugh all the way to the banks, who erm, are also laughing. Follow the money!